


Onwards

by uarejeff



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Clark doesn't find her, Flashbacks, Gen, Nightmares, Superpowers, Tears, Xe/xem pronouns for an oc, directly after her pod crashes, tenth fic kinda proud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:15:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23236078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uarejeff/pseuds/uarejeff
Summary: She doesn't think she'll ever get used to the blue sky.
Kudos: 7





	Onwards

**Author's Note:**

> This is just an au that I've had in my head for a while now. I might continue it, but for now this is just a one shot in which Clark does not find Kara's pod, and the events that occur directly afterwards.

She’s falling, that much she knows for certain. She’s falling, and her pod’s alarms are wailing, and everything is too bright, too loud, too blue.

Blue.

Blue sky, blue but it fades to white at the horizon, blue sky but it’s broken by dark gray clouds, blue but now all she sees is brown— 

* * *

Kara is home. She’s kneeling next to Kal’s crib, letting him cling to her fingers, and he’s  _ screaming,  _ his face red, curls plastered to his forehead, and she’s saying something about quieting down,  _ please _ Kal, but he won’t  _ shut up _ , and Kara just wants to close her eyes, to press her hands over her ears, but Kal’s still holding onto her hand and—

Kara opens her eyes. She inhales, and then coughs when all she tastes is smoke. She inhales again, sharply, desperately, and scrambles at her pod to make the godawful beeping stop. Her pod is smoking, thick billowing dark clouds that cover everything in a layer of soot. The windshield is smashed in, leaving shards of broken plastic all over the seat and her clothes, reflecting the light and  _ sparkling. _

_ Pretty, _ Kara thinks, but her head is foggy and her eyes hurt and even with the windshield broken it’s too cramped, too tight—

No. She needs to find Kal. She doesn’t know where he landed, or who he’s with, or if he even survived—

_ No.  _ She will find Kal. She will find shelter. She’ll find food, water, and  _ then _ she’ll radio home. 

Kal, shelter, food, water, radio. Easy.

Kara pushes her way out of her destroyed pod, gingerly avoiding the broken shards, and checking herself over for damage. Which, besides for her torn clothes, there seems to be none of. Something hot twists in her stomach, something that feels like her mother  _ (You will have great powers—) _ , and she glances briefly at the sun to confirm that yes, it is yellow. 

Kara wraps her arms around herself, chooses a direction and starts walking, trying to shake off the stiffness of her limbs, the ache in her head, and the burning in her stomach that keeps trying to claw its way up her throat. Everything around her is fractured, too bright, too blue, the shapes wheeling around her until she feels dizzy, until she crouches down on the ground and presses a hand over her eyes, fingers buried in the dirt to ground herself. She breathes in, and her lungs ache, like they had on Krypton, right up at the end—

Kal, shelter, food, water, radio.

She forces herself to stand and keeps walking, putting one trembling foot in front of the other. Light is wrong here, bending when it shouldn’t bend, breaking where it should be solid, plunging her world into darkness and replacing objects with their insides, their centers. She turns around once, and sees her pod, even though she must have walked several clicks by now. 

_ (You will do extraordinary things—) _

The scenery spins past her, angry, rising to trip her, sucking her into the ground when she falls. Finally, finally, her surroundings spit out a black road, shimmering and wet-looking in the heat. It’s a stretch of unity amidst the cacophony of chaos, of colors, of noises around her. Still. Black. Road.  __

_ Roads are a record of travel, of growth, of the ones who’ve gone before and the ones who stayed behind to lead you, weary traveller, to your place of triumph.  _

_ Who said that? _ Kara thinks as she steps carefully onto the blackness. It was a philosopher, a visitor to Krypton. She takes a smell step forward, glancing around, waiting for the inky blackness to move. Xe was trying to teach about xir religion, one of motion, of movement. Nothing happens, so Kara strides forward confidently along the darkness, even though it’s a different direction than the one she was heading in originally. This road looks purposeful, like it was meant to be here, like it was  _ built, _ so Kara might as well follow it. 

_ But what was xir name? _ Kara chews her lip, and when all she gets is a soft  _ o _ sound, she runs over the quote again in her head. Xe was giving a speech, and Kara had been bored. She wanted to go back to her room, where she was building a machine for her father. It would’ve been a simple thing, just lighting up and whirring and maybe even spin if Kara could find the right pieces, but it would have made her father smile, an expression that was in short supply those days.

Xir name was Otho, and xe would have stayed in the Visitor District, which was the first to be—

Kara bites the inside of her cheek, hard, and stops thinking about xem. 

_ Kal, _ she focuses on instead. They should’ve landed right next to each other, but she’s alone, completely and totally, with nothing but a stretch of blackness beneath her and the words of a dead philosopher ringing in her ears. 

The sky is growing dark, and everything seems to grow louder. She can hear the creak of the brush by the road, the shifting of animals in their dens, roaring and burning, and then she realizes the thumping she hears is her own heart, the valves opening and closing, her dark blood slithering from atrium to ventricle and back again, and if she closes her eyes the sound of the wind in the feathers of the birds above her reaches her ears. An entire world, humming and thrumming and chirping and whistling and  _ existing _ and it’s so  _ loud, _ so painful, deafening and overwhelming and after spending months in the deep abyss of space, surrounding only by small pinpricks of light and her own breathing, all this motion makes her fall to her knees and  _ weep. _

Kara Zor-El has been on Earth for five hours and thirty-six minutes. Behind her, the sun melts into the horizon, turning the clouds a violent shade of pink, and in front of her lies only the road.  _ Forward only, and never backwards, _ says a voice that sounds like her mother’s, and a ghost of her father leans over her and says  _ onwards.  _


End file.
